The Deeply Disturbing Truth About Diets
posted on: January 05, 2022. posted in: Weight loss, Nutrition, Dieting
Diet culture is incredibly persuasive and manipulative. The challenge is getting people to see this and understand this, when they're currently trapped in the vicious cycle of it all.
Maybe this is you. Maybe you're trapped in diet culture and someone has directed you to Rebelfit to try and free you from it. But you just can't see or understand what they're talking about. Yet.
Try this :
I'd like to you to imagine leaving your house one day and noticing your neighbour carrying a bucket of water. They pop the bucket of water in their car. They drive off. And you don't think much of it. You carry on with your day, and you forget about this fairly unremarkable experience.
That is, until next week, when...
You leave your house again. You see them carrying a bucket of water again. You see them pop it in the car again. You see them drive off again. And now you're getting curious. What on earth are they up to?
You see the doing same the next week. And the next week. And the next week. Every Thursday your neighbour leaves their house with their bucket of water, taking that bucket somewhere, but where???
Eventually your curiosity (ok, nosiness) gets the better of you, and you position yourself outside your front door the following Thursday, ready to casually ask them where they're off to. Here they come. Quick! Ask them now...
"Oh hi Janet! That's a lovely.... err... bucket you've got there. Are you going anywhere interesting with it?"
Clumsy. But good enough to elicit the response you've been hoping for...
"Hi! Well I'm off to get my water weighed, it's that time of the week again!"
Water weighed? What on earth is she going on about? So you ask her to explain, and she tells you...
"Well a couple of months ago I found this pool of water on my kitchen floor. I asked a friend for advice on how to get rid of it and they recommended this Water Watchers mop and bucket. What you do is you use the Water Watchers mop to clear up all the water, you then drain it all into this Water Watchers bucket, then you take it to the Water Watchers group each week to get it weighed. So far I've lost 3 litres! I'm so proud of myself!"
Now as a normal, rational, sensible person you find this behaviour strange, but you laugh and smile like a good Brit would do, and you don't flag up that this is ABSOLUTELY BONKERS to Janet, because you don't want to offend her.
You observe this strange behaviour in Janet week after week. Then a few months down the line you can't help but notice Janet has a new bucket, a different bucket. So you tactically position yourself outside your front door again, ready to ask another one of your very clumsy questions...
"Oh hi Janet! That's a lovely new bucket you've got there! What's errr.... where... err... what are you up to with it?"
Janet walks over to you looking very glum, then explains...
"Ugh, well you know all that water I lost with my Water Watchers mop and bucket? Well it all came back! And now the pool of water on my kitchen floor is even bigger! I'm trying this new Water World mop and bucket to see if it works any better. Off for my first weigh in, wish me luck!"
Again, you restrain yourself from grabbing Janet by the collar and screaming THIS IS BONKERS in her face. And like a good old British neighbour you smile and wish her luck with her next weigh in.
A few weeks pass by and you bump into Janet again on the way out and she stops you to say...
"OMG! This new Water World mop and bucket is amazing!! I've lost far more water that I ever did with that rubbish Water Watchers mop and bucket! You should try it!!"
You don't have a leak. There's no pool of water on your floor. You don't need a mop and bucket. But you're British and you cannot be rude, so you politely say...
"Oh yes! Well maybe I'll try it some time!"
You won't. It's absolutely crazy behaviour. But you've done your polite, British, neighbourly thing for the day, and that's about as much as you'll ever have to do with water loss culture.
A few months pass by, until one day you notice water gushing out of Janets front door and her in an absolutely panic with her Water World mop and bucket, trying to deal with the flood. You run over and ask...
"What they hell is going on Janet? You need to get a plumber FAST!!"
Janet starts crying and explains...
"Oh this is all my fault! I didn't stick to my Water World mopping plan and that's why all this water is flooding out! It's my fault, I need to try harder! But don't worry, look how much of the water I've got in my bucket though, it's working!"
You realise there's a time and a place for being a polite, British neighbour, and there's a time and a place for pointing out the bleeding obvious to Janet. You choose the latter, and scream...
"Janet!! This isn't to do with your mopping plan or the mop and bucket you're using! YOU HAVE A LEAK! You don't need a mopping plan, or a Water World mop and bucket, you need expert help from a plumber to FIX THE LEAK!!"
Janet is deep in water loss culture. She's bought into it. She's invested in it. She has spent a fortune on mops and buckets over the years. And all of this has produced a deep state of cognitive dissonance (the pain we feel when we've been conned) that stops her from changing her mind about it. So she says...
"I don't have a leak! It's just not the right mop and bucket that's all! I might try the Noom mop and bucket, that's worked well for a few of my friends. They've lost loads of water with it, it really works!"
You walk off. You leave Janet to it. And as the weeks, months and year pass by you hear about her trying the Noom mop and bucket, the 5:2 mop and bucket, the Keto mop and bucket, the Intermittent Fasting mop and bucket. It seems like every few months she's trying a new mop and bucket and eulogising about how well it works.
In your mind it's obvious...
Of course these various mops and buckets help her lose water. Any old mop and bucket can help her lose water. They all work for a little while, but the water KEEPS COMING BACK. And it keeps coming back because she clearly has a leak in her kitchen that she's completely in denial of and refuses to fix.
With time you speak to other friends and you learn of their experiences of this same water loss culture. This belief that you need to be mopping your kitchen for 2 or 3 hours a day, then getting the water weighed each week, rather than fixing the cause, THE LEAK.
You realise that actually the companies selling these mops and buckets brainwash their customers to make their kitchens leak more. They tell them to hit their pipes with hammers, to throw things down their sink that block it, and to put the plugs in their sinks and turn the taps right up. These companies keep coming up with new and more manipulative ways to get people to FLOOD THEIR KITCHENS, all under the disguise of being a "healthy mopping plan".
One of your friends even went to Water World and was told off by the Water World consultant for getting a plumber in to unblock her sink. She was told...
"Don't ever do that! If you want to protect your water loss you need to avoid plumbers and listen to us!!!"
The extent of the water loss culture manipulation goes even further. Water World has conjured up a system called "syns" which penalises you every time you turn your tap off. You realise this makes perfect sense from a company / profit perspective. Produce a point system that shames people for turning their taps off, then they'll leave their taps on longer. Their sinks will overflow. They'll have a bigger flood of water on the floor. They'll buy more of your mops and buckets. And they'll think that you're their saviour when they see their amazing water losses...
BUT YOU'RE THE COMPANY CAUSING THE FLOOD!
It's genius. And cruel. And criminal, in fact.
Millions of people being convinced to literally lose their minds and their lives to mopping, mopping, mopping... or in the case of diet culture... restricting, restricting, restricting... and then blaming themselves when they eventually lose control and can't cope with the flood. A flood clearly caused by the companies that sell mops and buckets!
If Janet was your neighbour, or more...
If Janet was your sister, mother or daughter...
Would you sit back and watch her waste her life and lose her mental health to mopping? Or would you encourage her to get a plumber and find the cause of her leak?
Liam
p.s. One of the biggest leaks I observe in my clients is the mindset they have around their body and food, a mindset learned and developed at their slimming club. These companies groom you for weight and fat gain, and if you don't realise that and reject diet culture, you'll never retake controlx.
